PSA: Xbox Reserved Space & Storage Expansion Card

User Support Hub Hardware & Peripherals
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EDIT:

After input from @MimikriX I spent time moving my MSFS install from my Storage Expansion Card back to Internal Storage and then, back again, to the Storage Expansion Card.

Having done so, my Reserved Space is now on the Storage Expansion Card and I’m no longer even able to get the Reserved Space to not be located on a separate storage location as originally described in this post.

I’m perplexed, however I’m also pleased as the above is how it ought to work and, as such, we are able to utilize MSFS on a Storage Expansion Card as desired.

For those who have an Xbox and are interested in a Storage Expansion Card and how that interfaces with the sim, I have some data to share.

I have a number of Xboxes here at my home and have a couple of storage expansion cards, too.

I have the sim installed on a 1TB Storage Expansion Card on my living room Series X. I had wanted to test some aspects of SU12 beta on my son’s Xbox Series S. I thought it would be as simple as plugging the Expansion Card into the Series S and doing some testing. Well, it appears that the entire Reserved Space (where all Marketplace, custom camera settings and some other settings are saved) for the sim is not stored on the Expansion Card. Once I plugged the card into the Series S and launched the sim, I was prompted to download both the Deluxe and Premium content — I already have this installed.

I was curious.

I went to the Xbox Dashboard—>Microsoft Flight Simulator—>Manage game and add-ons—>Saved Data and looked at the Reserved Space size. It is only 16.0 GB on this S. I have significant amounts of Marketplace content installed on the installation of the sim on the Series X I had this Expansion Card plugged into — 194.6 GB worth. Clearly, all that content has been installed in the Reserved Space on the Series X on the internal storage device rather than the Storage Expansion Card that the sim itself is installed on.

I thought this may be of interest to those of you curious about how your Xbox is going to handle the storage constraints as the sim grows in size both in terms of the base installation size and in terms of whatever Marketplace content you purchase/download.

It looks like the Reserved Space for the sim is installed on the internal storage regardless if you have the sim installed on an external device. Additionally, I’ve seen no way to move the Reserved Space contents nor set which location it gets stored in.

I have no idea if the Reserved Space will “spill over” and be also stored on the external device should the internal reach capacity.

Based on my findings, this will impact Series S users the most. Between the formatting and storage use of the OS, the internal storage is less than the 500 GB total of the device. If you have nothing else installed on the internal device that less-than-500 GB is the total storage you’ve got for Marketplace content. Again, unless there is a mechanism for spillover to the external device.

Likewise, Series X users will have an amount shy of 1 TB — again, due to formatting and OS usage.

Anyhow, this is just some useful information as we move forward and our installs continue to grow with time.

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I can confirm the above. Have been looking into the same throughout the SU12 testing flights. I’ve run into this situation which has led to a relentless need to continuously reinstall addons beginning with the premium/deluxe addons. Originally I thought that it was related to the Carenado plane bug where any thing behind 3 or four of the Carenado planes were installed I was unable to get past the “checking for updates” screen.

Have voiced this concern and made it clear that it is a separate issue from the third party addon aircraft that would not allow the sim to load…

Problem: Without installing any add on planes and having installed the a total of what amounts to an accumulation of approx. 400GB of add-on scenery (airports/environments) this triggers the dreaded “checking for updates” loading screen which if on Xbox can only be adverted by a complete wipe and reinstall those on Pc have the ability to move the community folder and remove content.

If you look at the forums, there is a new wave of people who are having this experience with the rollout of SU12 today. The claim fix for the Carenado planes may have the intended fix but this is however a completely separate issue that needs separate attention…

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I have had the same issue. I use appropriately 495 GB of reserved space. Around there, or if i download more I’ll be stuck on the Checking for Updates screen which in turn makes me delete my reserved space and have to redownload all of my content on MSFS. They need to fix this issue. I had it running fine until the Add On Support came out and was downloaded. All of a sudden I’m back being stuck on checking for updates. So after I deleted my reserved space for the 108th time or so I decided to turn off my rolling cache. I’m currently redownloading everything now as I write this so I’ll have to see if that helps.

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NixonRedgrave, it would be best to re-post this in the bug section of the forum so the issue can be addressed.

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I wasn’t and still am not considering this a bug. My initial OP was simply an analysis of how the Xbox OS manages its data.

I, honestly, do not know if the Xbox OS is supposed to install its Reserved Space on the same storage device the sim is installed on or if it is working as intended.

The other users who posted here are posting about something related to what is stored in the Reserved Space, but not strictly related to my OP.

There does seem to be some similarities to what was stated in the third post of this thread and this issue:
https://forums.flightsimulator.com/t/all-wus-and-marketplace-purchases-uninstall-themselves-continuously/582798

I posted a possible solution to that issue, in that thread, and it sounds like it has worked, so far, for one user who tried it and replied, as such.

Regarding the issue the second poster made.

Basically, in their case, their installed Carenado content was causing a bug preventing the sim from launching. However, they couldn’t delete that Carenado content without launching the sim — a Catch 22.

Their issue was due to there being no way for the Xbox user to reach into the Reserved Space to “cherry pick” add-ons individually for deletion, such as what would occur in Windows via File Explorer. I don’t believe their issue of not being able to delete the content individually to be a bug, either, but a seriously restrictive aspect of how the Xbox OS and the sim’s storage of downloaded content are interrelated. It would take, I strongly believe, Xbox Labs and Asobo to redesign the way the sim stores Marketplace content on the Xbox’s storage device in order to allow us to delete individual items outside of the running sim’s Content Manager. This is not a trivial change. Therefore, it’s also not a bug.

Does any/all of that make sense?

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No the portion where where where for us Xbox users once we hit 500gb of addon content we get stuck on the searching for update screen that just spins and indefinitely with the only remedy being a wipe of the reserved space

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You are right. I did a poor job of reading your post and saw the statement about Carenado and skimmed it.

My apologies. That is a bit unlike me.

Is what you are saying is we have a hard limit to the amount of Reserved Space the Xbox OS will allow us to reach?

In other words, your Marketplace content downloads caused you to hit this limit? And this limit seems to be 500GB?

It seems odd that suddenly with SU12 lots of people are suddenly hitting this. Something else seems to be going on, I’d think.

I’ve been reading posts where people are getting stuck on the updating screen and unplugging their LAN cable to bypass the issue. Is the issue you had/have different to this?

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I’m thinking about your issue, because when SU9 launched I had the exact same thing happen to me and I had nowhere near that level of GB of Marketplace Content.

Here’s a post I made helping someone else with the issue when SU9 launched:

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Correct. Within the beta it was flagged as specifically relates to the Carenado planes however through further tinkering and thousands of thousands of GBs of content d/l (3x that of a traditional month since SU12 beta rollout) every time I reinstalled content and got upward of 495 gb I would get the dreaded spinning checking for update screen. I would think, maybe is this stairport scenery… next time I would avoid installing that and it would be something else to trigger the screen… and so on and so on each time something different.

It seems that once the fix for the planes was in the majority of CPU testers were satisfied…

It wasn’t till rollout that the problem reared its head again.

There’s this issue ( I haven’t seen the pull the LAN cord) solution) but whatever I install that puts me over 500 gb puts me back to clearing the reserves and starting with downloading my premium and deluxe packages.

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Help me clarify.

Your Reserved Space is 500+GB alone without including the base sim’s 69.5 GB + 59.8 GB World – offline mode + 299.9 MB Add-on Support?

And, if so, have you reinstalled all of that content? Or have you purposely avoided hitting that limit?

But if you reinstalled all of it, the sim isn’t screwing up even though it screwed up on that Reserve Space size at launch of SU12?

Are you on a Series S or X?

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Please disregard parts of my last post to you.

Upon communicating with @PrincipalJay a clearer picture of this issue regarding Reserve Space and size constraints is becoming clearer.

I’m going to continue to work the problem and figure out, exactly, what the limitations are here in order to properly address it for the development team(s).

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Series X

So currently I’m running a lite “install as I go”. Plan the flight, install the scenery, fly.

Stock game - 69.5gb
Add-on support -299.9
Saved data - 292.8gb

557.3gb of the sea gate expansion drive free

284 installed items
347 not installed

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Okay. (It’s times like this I wish we were on the phone…)

The issue, we believe, is we have a hard cap of Reserved Space, which is going to cause issues for us should we reach that limit.

When you attempt to install Marketplace content that would total an amount in excess of 500GB does the sim give you any sort of warning that you will exceed a storage space constraint?

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Negative. Ten character max I must type baba

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Ok. So you can (read: are able to) install all of your content, blowing past that 500GB constraint, but the issue doesn’t rear its head until you quit and relaunch the sim?

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@UnitedArt what is your Reserved Space size, my friend?

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On one occasion I think it was specifically a Carenado plane that put the sim over the limit the sim quit cold, it went hard ctd and when restarted got stuck on the screen. On other attempts I have surpassed the 500gb limit. At first before catching onto what was happening I would do large batch installs and they would load and the game would take the data. However as is best practice, a reset after content install brings best results and that would lead to the update loop.

Later I would install in 20-40gb batches restarting frequently to prevent losing time if I over ran that limit

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Ok. One more question.

What is your free space on your internal storage device?

Since I have identified that Reserved Space is stored on the internal storage, knowing how much room is available on yours would be helpful in understanding this issue further.

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232GB, 151 addons installed. I have about 58GB of free space on the internal storage device.

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